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Missy Bear sails to Astypalaea Butterfly Island As well as the Knights Hospitaller, the Latins and Franks more generally liked to build a nice castle. The crews of Missy Bear and Money Penny have wandered around the earthquake-smitten ruins of our latest Latin edifice, on the remote Aegean island of Astypalaea. The island is shaped like a butterfly, its two mountainous wings linked by a narrow, rocky isthmus. It is quite barren and sparsely developed, with the main town or Ch

Icarian Sea Once upon a time, Alix and I were pretty poor at spotting and identifying birds. And then lockdowns happened, when we were permitted just one walk every twenty-four hours (crazy, wasn’t it) We were very lucky, because our daily release involved wandering around the neighbouring parkland and farmland of Cirencester. We took our time, as we wanted our precious per diem  freedom to last. Our walks became longer in distance, and we stopped more often to take notice of

Crews of Money Penny and Missy Bear on Tilos, ready for lunch I love descending south from Leros, but coming back is often a climb. And a slog. The prevailing summer winds in the Dodecanese are north-westerlies. Sometimes you can get a southerly and hitch a ride back up, but that is not often. Leaving Leros, we had good, prevailing winds to take us down to Vlichadia, a bay at the south of mountainous Kalymnos, just west of Kalymnos town. Money Penny was already in the bay on

Halki castle looking south-east towards Rhodes I wasn’t very good at history at school, maybe because the way it was taught didn’t interest me. Perhaps because he’s my namesake, I remember Richard I (the Lionheart). He was an English king and knight, and went off on a crusade with other English men to win back Jerusalem from Saladin and his Muslim hordes. Good English pilgrims would then once more be safe to travel to the Holy Land. I even constructed and painted an Airfix-li

Missy Bear leaving Tilos In my last blog, we left you as we were driving northwards across the Alps northwards, leaving Italy. This was the opposite of Hannibal, who entered Italy with his elephants 2,200 years ago, heading southwards towards his Roman enemy, during the second Punic war.  His thirty plus elephants were probably small North-African species, and he is thought to have used trainers (mahouts) from the Indian sub-continent to keep the beast under control. Hannibal